


Maelstrom

by amoeve



Series: Zutara Week 2015 [7]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Kid Fic, Steam Baby - Freeform, Zutara Week 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 19:59:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5388353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoeve/pseuds/amoeve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very very late completion of Zutara Week 2015. Prompt “Maelstrom”, and my own internal insistence that it had to be kid fic because I hadn’t done one yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maelstrom

There are summer storms in the Fire Nation that roil across the sky, black and brittle and boisterous.

In the first year of their marriage, Katara abandons their discussions with the Royal Chamberlain on how to rearrange their chambers and sprints outside, turning her face up to the rain. 

“Excuse us,” Zuko says – for it does not do to offend a chamberlain – and follows his wife outside. Huge, almost hot droplets have splotched his silk the colour of dried blood by the time he reaches her. “Katara!”

Her clothes are clinging to her skin, her eyes radiant. “I’ve missed the rain!” she calls, over the pattering like warm, wet hands all over the palace roofs and grounds. 

“That doesn’t mean we have to be out in it!” he says, exasperated. 

“Waterbender,” she croons at him, and spreads her arms, and suddenly there’s a dome of silence all around them, a silvery, shimmering circle where the droplets do not fall. 

He holds up a palm full of fire. “I prefer not being soaked, you know.”

She looks up at him, mischievous, and he knows she’s going – 

She lets the rain fall on them again. He puts out his fire and kisses her, and kisses her, and, well, if she starts peeling off his wet clothes, he needs to get out of them, doesn’t he? 

And it is warming him up, after all, and nobody can see them through all this rain.

*

A year later, in storm season, they’re standing out in the garden, their plump three-month-old baby bundled in Zuko’s arms. 

The rain is sliding down the dome that Katara’s holding over them, and all he can hear is their daughter’s breathing and the rippling of the drops as they hit the ground. 

“I still think you’re being too delicate with her,” Katara says, gazing wistfully at the water. 

“What if she catches a cold?” he asks, snuggling her closer to his chest. 

“I grew up in the South Pole, and I’m fine. My mother used to leave us out in our cradles in the snow.” Katara just looks at him, and oh, he can’t say no to those wide blue eyes. “Besides, it’s part of her heritage.”

Zuko gives in. “We’re going inside and drying her off straight away!”

Katara grins at him, and takes their daughter from him, and now that she’s using her arms, the rain begins to fall. 

This year, the lightning wakes the baby. As she wails, Katara pulls the water from their clothes and keeps them dry as they move back inside.

“Don’t cry, baby girl,” Katara soothes, bouncing her, before shooting a look at Zuko. “She’s definitely your daughter.”

“What a relief,” he deadpans, launching a fireball at the hearth.

A water whip flicks the back of his head, and he takes his family in his arms. “You’re a minx,” he says to his wife. 

Katara looks at him innocently, the baby’s mouth full of her index finger. “Me? How can I bend when I’m busy?”

This year, his laughter drowns out the thunder, and warms him faster than the fire ever could.

**Author's Note:**

> The “cradles in the snow” line is an allusion to something a lot of Scandinavian parents do, leaving their babies – blanketed up, of course! – out in the fresh air for a bit in the winter. It’s not meant to suggest that Kya was in any way neglectful of her kids!
> 
> *
> 
> I kept running into the strangest trouble with this prompt. I had some really, really great ideas for it, and just found them impossible to write. They needed too much context, or preamble, or just went their own way, or to places that meant they were turning into novel-lengths. (I wonder if it’s because I was arbitrarily insisting on kid fic, and I felt that kids needed explaining?) 
> 
> Eventually I just made myself write something purely so that I’d’ve completed Zutara Week 2015, and this is what popped out, easy as sneezing. Writing is odd.


End file.
